The July CTP has a lot of good changes in it. We've cleaned up the names across most everything. The assembly names have been changed and no longer contain code names. Likewise, the namespaces have been cleaned up. Some of the executables, such h.exe, still need to be renamed. Overall, you'll find there's been a lot of clean up.

Also in the July CTP we've tried to get in all of the protocol changes. Some of those changes were name changes. Others were significant overhauls of particular web methods. Going forward, we want to minimize the protocol changes, partly because we'll be using the live development client binaries with the dogfood server. The code developers build on their machines will be what's used to get work done, such as check out files and change work items.

After the cut for beta 2, there were a number of design change requests (DCR) that were approved and implemented. These are effectively features that either needed to be added or improved significantly based on either customer feedback or our own use of the product. For source control, these DCR's included re-working the conflict resolution experience (resolve dialog), improved administration features, support for files larger than 4 GB, support for uncompressed files (e.g., files, such as JPEG files, that grow rather than shrink with GZip won't be stored compressed), and a caching proxy server.

The caching proxy server was the biggest source control DCR and provides support for geographically distributed teams by caching the files that are downloaded from the server. After the first request for a version of a file, all subsequent requests can be fulfilled locally using the local caching server. The caching proxy stores each version of each file that is requested, and its ability to cache files is limited only by the amount of disk space that it is given. This DCR was driven by customer feedback (when something comes up often enough, it gets addressed). It also is something we're looking forward to using with the new dogfood upgrade because we (the source control team) are in North Carolina.